(text and background only visible when logged in)
FEATURES: The Health Issue
Hide Title
hide teaser

(text and background only visible when logged in)
From the Dean
Dear Friends,
Health has been at the forefront for my family the past two years. I was diagnosed with prostate cancer in December 2021, then underwent surgery to remove my prostate last summer. I’ve been cancer-free since August 2022 and am tremendously thankful for the support of the Georgia Tech community. The entire experience prompted me to go public with my story and encourage men to get tested — especially Black men, who are two times more likely to die from the disease.
Health is the theme of our issue, but for more reasons than my personal journey. The Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University begins its next 25 years atop the U.S. News & World Report Best Colleges national rankings. This is the first time the Department has simultaneously been No. 1 for undergraduate and graduate programs.
Coulter BME certainly does a significant share of health-related research in the College but doesn’t exclusively own the space. In these pages, you’ll read about some of the researchers across campus who are making discoveries to fight cancer, prostate and otherwise. You’ll learn about devices and procedures developed by faculty and alumni that are making a real difference in people’s lives after clearing the high bar set by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. You’ll also meet a few graduates who are helping transform health and medicine.
Go Jackets!
Raheem Beyah
Dean and Southern Company Chair

(text and background only visible when logged in)
More Stories
Keeping People First
Alumna Parika “Pinky” Petaipimol is inspired to persevere by people she’ll never meet.
Bulletin Board Material
A scrap of paper changed the life of two-time cancer survivor Josh Vose, leading him away from the operating room and into the field of medical devices.
There’s No Stopping Savi Agarwal
In fact, “no” isn’t a word the 17-year-old second-year BME student uses very much at all.
10 Questions with Manu Platt
Manu Platt, Ph.D. BME 2006, was a member of the second class of Ph.D. students in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering and eventually returned to the faculty for more than a decade. In 2023, Platt was named founding director of the new Center for Biomedical Engineering Technology Acceleration (BETA) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
(text and background only visible when logged in)
(text and background only visible when logged in)